Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Drug
quality is currently receiving growing international attention. Over the past
decade, public awareness has been sharpened with the existence of counterfeit
and substandard medicines especially in developing countries where drug regulations remain ineffective.
Mass media through television, radio and online have been hyped with thousands
of reviews revolving around the topics of fraud
medicines, the methods used and strategies being done to take down the
people behind it.

Just
as it gets tiring hearing it, another alarming issue prevailed on the news.
Although different types of pharmaceutical products are being involved, the
existing data shows that certain anti-infectious agents, particularly
anti-microbial medicines, are the most counterfeited products in developing
countries. The largest in the list of distributors are Jakarta, Indonesia and
Phnom Penh, Cambodia. China still takes the lead on the biggest manufacturer.

Although
the existence of the issue is acknowledged, the real numbers and the extent of
the problem are not well documented. Estimates of global prevalence may range
between 1% and 50% globally. The few existing studies which conduct experiments
to determine the quality of drugs circulating different regions and
investigations to know the amount of foreign substances in the medicines are
headed by either the pharmaceutical companies who rarely share the result of
the studies for the protection of their products or by non-profit organizations
funded by few private entities and individuals. The Peterson Group, one of the NGOs
conducting one of the studies, states that these studies are critical to
measure the real issue but with the lack of resources and half-hearted
attention given by the government, results are expected to lag behind. It may
be too late to solve an issue before another one comes in.

Anti-microbial
drugs are targeted because of its popularity among the people. It is used to
treat infections and almost all ailment can be infected which makes it an even
more dangerous drugs. Even as FDA, UN and WHO have already released a warning
on the dangers of these medicines especially ‘old’ antibiotics such as
penicillin, trimethoprim–sulfamethoxazole and chloramphenicol, are among the
favored counterfeited antimicrobials.

The
poor quality of drugs has been linked to counterfeiting of medicines, chemical
instability especially in tropical climates, and poor quality control during
manufacture. Many factors contribute to the increased prevalence of substandard
and counterfeit medications. Much of the counterfeit drug trade is probably
linked to organized crime, corruption, the narcotics trade, the business
interests of unscrupulous politicians and unregulated pharmaceutical companies.